“Didn’t say you were.”
“You implied it.”
“I was merely implying that this doesn’t seem like a hockey player’s wheelhouse.”
He exhales a quiet laugh. “Fair.”
I glance at the clock on my screen without meaning to. My lunch break is already bleeding into the afternoon, and my stomach growls loudly in response.
“You haven’t eaten,” he says.
I look down at my mug. “I had coffee.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“It does if you’re busy.”
He studies me for a beat, then shifts forward in his chair. “Come eat with me.”
“What?”
“Come have lunch,” he repeats, like it’s obvious. “You can give me the rest of the rundown. We’ll call it a working lunch.”
Every instinct I have tightens at once, because technically, this isn’t really appropriate. This is a line. This is—
“It’s public,” he adds, reading me too easily. “You’re not my doctor anymore, and this is fundraiser-related.”
For the most part, he’s right. But even though he’s not my patient anymore, there are still rules and ethics that span longer than active treatment windows. And I hate that I’m going to say yes anyway.
“It’ll need to be quick,” I say. “I have patients this afternoon.”
He’s already standing.
“I’ll take what I can get.”
Outside, the winter sun is bright but not warm, a sharp wind chasing us down the sidewalk. I cast my eyes toward the mountains where it was raining earlier, noting the half arc of a rainbow’s light breaking through the clouds.
I glance away as we duck into a burger joint two blocks from the clinic. It’s nothing fancy, and nothing that feels like a statement.
We sit across from each other in a booth that’s slightly too small for him, his knee angled carefully to avoid bumping the table.
He orders double of everything, and I order without really thinking, defaulting to a small cheeseburger.
“You always eat like a bird?” he asks.
“I eat when I can,” I reply. “Which is usually later than I should.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
I give him a look. “Do you always interrogate people over lunch?”
“Only when I’m worried they’ll pass out on me.”
“I’m not fragile.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
Our food arrives quickly, steam rising between us over the fries. I open my burger and reach for the ketchup automatically, twisting the cap loose and swirling the bottle across the bun as I keep talking—about donor fatigue, about timing, about how the numbers look worse than they should.
